Shoe Polish Eyes
by pin twist
Summary: The war's over, Draco's sick but bound for Azkaban. Harry's in love too late. Slash.


Shoe Polish Eyes

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Ms. J.K. Rowling.

Author's Note: This is a weird poetic thing I wrote a few years back for my creative writing class. The war's over, Draco's sick but bound for Azkaban. Harry's in love.

I read about it in the papers. All the articles, I folded them away and put them in a box for no reason I could name. But I knew somehow all along that it couldn't be your fault. I knew it, because I knew you. Because I'd spent my life looking into your little acid eyes, hating you. And I knew you better than I knew myself, and I knew that you didn't do it.

I knew a lot of things, but I didn't know how to help you. So I kept on folding, article after article into my cardboard box, until the top wouldn't stay on and I had to put the tea kettle on to keep it shut.

There was a picture with the one article, a crowd outside the courthouse, rammed against the Ministry tape-line and there was your little graying face by your father's elbow, a smear in the newspaper ink, as if you'd moved when they'd snapped the picture. But I could still see your little black eyes, not so little at all, but large and glistening in a way that wasn't right, like oil spills above each cheekbone, eye-lids smudged with something like despair.

And then I heard about you, moving to the hospital and I felt something and

I went to visit you while you were there, stood very patiently as the woman with press-on fingernails flicked through the filing cabinet. "I'm sorry Mr. Malfoy is allowed no visitors. He is an AZK transferal" AZK. I blinked.

So I went around back and threw rocks at the second story window imagining it was yours.

I hope they're feeding you, I said, I hope your wrists don't look like flesh-covered popsicle sticks anymore. I hope you're really happy and maybe reading a couple good books, and learning German or something. I hope your bed's by the window and you're still laughing and eat so much chocolate ice cream that you throw up. I hope anyway, I said and drew an arc in the dirt with my shoe.

And then I went away but I came back the next day and asked if I could see you but no they told me, he isn't here, he's been moved to a special hospital outside of London because he isn't doing well. So I took a bus and came to see you, whiter than the hospital sheets and there wasn't any window at all and there wasn't any chocolate ice cream or German books or laughter.

You couldn't see me, I could tell, but I sat right on the edge of your bed, your hipbone by my hipbone(inadvertently)and It's alright I said, they don't recognize me anyway now without my hair. I chuckled to myself and a fluorescent light flickered, flickered in the hall. That was quite a blast your father gave me I said(and the light bulb went dead)they had to shave half my skull just to get at the bloody mess. then I realized that it wasn't funny and I remembered

you'd always liked my hair. I knew. I knew because yours was so thin and you hated it, hated that it was like corn-silk and fell like silver water in your eyes. I saw you and your envious gaze directed towards me&myscalp and whenever we fought, it was my hair you grabbed for first. Everybody thought it was your _signature move_, two great fistfuls, but I remember. I remember how your eyes went black like shoe polish and shiny; I remember your liquid eyes and the tendons standing out in your little wrists as you pulled and the way you'd breathe. I always liked the way you breathed, something so little and bent and pretty, that it was nobody but you.

But I always knew you liked my hair. You breathed differently when you touched my hair, even prettier, and sharp, a little needle in my eardrum.

You were really white in that hospital bed and yours eyes were open, and not that pretty black, but purple, sick purple, and blue I don't like you with purple eyes, I said, and pulled back your hospital sheets, stiff like drawing-paper over your listless legs.

I was glad that night that I was strong still after all those months in the hospital, I was glad for the slender muscle rigid in my narrow arms because for all that nothing, you were heavy as I hoisted you over my shoulder. I guess bones and bruises weigh a lot. And luckily I was always fast, as I sprinted down seventeen flights of stairs, your little mouth hot against my shoulder blade and a landing for every year that he hit you.

I thought that they would catch us, I really really did. But I suppose, looking back, they didn't care. You were a public criminal, chronic condition, a monthly figure in expensive pills and et cetera.

I didn't quite know what to do with you when I got you home so I put you in my bed, with seven blankets, and watched you breathe and your limp hair, and the gap between your thinning lips.

The next morning was horrible when you opened up your violet eyes and didn't see me, blinked with pain, and looked straight through me to my slow-shifting curtains by the open window.

I made you chicken soup with stars and cranked up the radiator in my little apartment, till I felt sweat on my temples, and then guilty as I remembered it was such second-rate food.

I set it by you every day, and a cup of peppermint tea because earl grey, was too expensive.

It wasn't the third day till you took a mouthful. You ate around the chicken and little bits of carrot, eating just the stars. I sat next to you and ate the rest, the starless broth gone cold but the spoon still warm from between your little teeth.

By the fifth day you still saw nothing from your shoe-polish eyes, but I sat and read aloud to you from Hogwarts: A History. I'd rather've read you something cheerful, or perhaps interesting, but it was the only book in my collection; Hermione'd given it to me last Christmas and I used it as a doorstop in the bathroom.

That night I fell asleep before you, right against the side of the bed; my head against your scabby knees and I woke up once, in the watered-down black of early dawn and heard your breathing in the darkness, like the way you used to when you touched my hair. I thought it strange because all my hair was gone and you'd shifted your warm legs and I thought that when I looked up at you towards the head of the bed I saw a smear of white, which were your teeth against the black, and your eyes were no longer purple.

And I drifted back to sleep wishing somehow for a second chance and more than your warm legs, but still listening to your needle breathing and the rattle of the spoon in its empty china bowl atop the radiator.

I woke up the next morning on the floor, next to the shattered china bowl and heard nothing but the stillness. I sat up and when I looked at you, I saw your mouth anemic-blue with death and gray on your cheekbones were there had been color. Your glue-gun eyes were clenched quite shut, one gnarled fist thrown over your flaxen hair, the other coiled by your cheek, knuckles pressing in the corner of your half-open mouth.

I remember tears melting hot and silent down my cheeks, which didn't make sense because really, you'd been dead for days, but something now was even different and the apartment was so silent and I put my knuckles in my eyes and hated you for looking like that.

I wanted to take back Hogwarts: A History and the seven blankets and the stars, and more than anything, wanted to hit you, like the old days, but I couldn't.

I never understood love, didn't get it, and neither did you. It wasn't something we were used to, wasn't something we were good at, wasn't something we could practice, wasn't something we could figure out.

but I sort of understood it now.

I bent forward over your terrible little face and saw my tears drip hot, onto your dead cheeks and I was shaking as I pressed my lips to your cold forehead. And suddenly it was too much and I slid in next to you underneath the blankets, my head beside yours on the pillow and listened to my tears drip.

I hurt and hurt and I missed the music of your breathing and your black eyes and little wrists. But it's too late, it's just too late I thought and wished and hurt and wished.

I looked at you It's not your fault I hissed, alright? I thought you might've said ok, so I forgave you and heard the absence of your breath. 'you know? I said and shivered close, you know? I said and shut my eyes

I always liked the way you breathed.

le fin.


End file.
